AT OMMA'S WIDGET SESSION TRACK on Tuesday, executives from RockYou andSlide.com, two companies at the forefront of the widget craze, saidtheir portable applications netted 90 million and 134 million uniquemonthly page views respectively (and Slide didn't even count Facebookusers).

But when asked how many of those viewers had actually loaded the widgetonto their page, the numbers dropped to about 15-20 million for RockYou,and 30 million for Slide--roughly one out of five for both companies.This distinction between page views and actual user engagement withwidgets (and ultimately, the brands associated with them) was a focalpoint of the panel's discussion.

According to panel moderator Seth Goldstein, CEO of the Facebook adnetwork SocialMedia, the widget "users-to-viewers" ratio was animportant takeaway for all marketers in attendance. "The big numbers youhear are people that are passively encountering the widget," saidGoldstein. "And any time a company can throw out [stats] in the millionsand billions, that's a sign of where dollars are going to go. But it'sthe level of engagement for marketers that's the question mark."

Goldstein also tasked the panelists with spelling out the differencebetween portable applications and widgets, as the terms are often usedsimultaneously--adding "confusion to the hype" surrounding a medium withclear, but slightly misunderstood, potential.

According to Sonya Chawla, senior director of ad sales at Slide.com,"We're open to every platform. Some people call them widgets, Googlecalls them Gadgets--but we call them TV boxes internally because it'slike letting users take a little TV and put it on their own profilepages."

"A widget is a simplified app," said Maurice Boissiere, vice presidentof client services of the widget development and management firm,Clearspring Technologies. "They can have dynamic functionality, like theability to make content fresh and relevant, but not the two-waycommunication of a deep application that's fully integrated into asocial graph like Facebook. But I think both terms will stay around."

The panelists agreed that publishers or advertisers planning to usewidgets need to make sure they have enough quality content to feed themwith and an actual strategy for promoting them--because widgets don'tjust go viral by chance. "Viral growth is engineered," said Goldstein.

"You can't just build a widget, put it somewhere and they come," saidBoissiere. "The initial burst comes from seeding a widget inline withcontent. Users are going to NBC.com for content around 'TheOffice'--they're not going to go to Facebook first to get that content."

According to the panelists, the recent wave of publisher and advertiserinterest in widgets was arguably tied to Facebook's decision to open itsplatform to developers. "With an app on Facebook, you as an advertisercan build a multipage experience that goes beyond just a widget," saidRo Choy, head of business development, RockYou. "You can create amicrosite in a user profile."

Choy added that the widget's success also depends on building realfunctionality into the application. "You have to create an experience--areason for users to invite their friends to that application," saidChoy. "The engagement of the social network user is tied to theplatform, so if it sits directly on the page, it's easier for a user toinvite their friends and engage with it."

Chawla added that applications and widgets are the way to go foradvertisers targeting social networkers, as brands like Cover Girl andcontent partners like MGA Entertainment and CNN have already runsuccessful widget campaigns. "People are so engaged in the socialnetwork, if you require them to leave to monetize them, you'll neverwin," said Goldstein. "It's selling against what they want to do. Youbuild an app where they stay, and you use it for branding, directresponse or to get some data."